... not bad at all

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2003)

What I found infinitely exhilarating and perhaps even fascinating were the scenes of London without Londoners - a totally deserted Metropolis, standing in itself as an unattended museum of the achievements of capitalist civilisation. One may see certain freshness in these scenes. It is reminiscent of one scene from Devil's Advocate, but to see London as the desert of the Real itself, to me stands second to none. But the movie itself is loaded with bourgeoisie values, like the scene in the supermarket for instance, projecting the delights of just walking into a shiny supermarket full of `choices' (accompanied by a fairy-tale music) and just simply walking out of it with smiley faces and with no trace of any hard-earned cash involved - a very important scene. The hilarious and the daft thing, though, is that the advertisements of Pepsi, Lilt and Tango (as the life saving source of water), Maltisers (as the necessary sugar supply), Mars, Heinz, Tablerone, Budgens, Costa Coffee, National Lottery and others could not have been more explicit. After all, somebody must have financed an £8,000,000 project, and I suspect the Royal Army did as well. Succinctly put, the moral of this story is that the hippy activists can cause an Armageddon, while the radiated GM apples are necessary for human survival. This is a British movie and, thus, it is loaded with Hobbesian British common sense. The setting is, thus, designed to instil a horror in a Brit's heart - as Mark says, `No Government, No Police, No Army' - does that not amount to a tragedy???? Further comments: the scene of Heather's `wise' political speech is just ruinous. The director, however, must me credited for some nicely angled shots and what they manage to capture especially inside the mansion. The `futureless' being tied with a chain like a dog has to be the black male, objectively observed and commented by two while males. Good use of DV. Produces an effective phenomenological sense of the immediacy of the situation. Conclusion. For the scenes on deserted London and M6 - 10/10; for the story 4/10; for critique of military ethics and shalowness 6/10; for non-Hollywood ending 6/10; for directing 8/10; for intellectuality 4/10;